The Clinton Race Card

One of the more insidious tactics of the Clinton presidential campaign has been to get surrogates to say outrageous things about Barack Obama -- that way, the noxious ideas can make it into circulation, but Hillary bears no direct responsibility for them. Remember when Jean Shaheen brought up the specter of Obama's past drug use, or any of Bill Clinton's nasty-grams from a few weeks ago?

Now comes the latest cheap shot by way of Pennsylvania's Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, a longtime and prominent Clinton backer. His comment: Obama can't win because he's black.

Oh, Rendell has the good sense not to word things quite that bluntly. According to the governor, the problem isn't that Obama's black, but that, well, so many Americans are white. Closet racists, most every one of them. "You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African American candidate," Rendell told the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

See, most white folks, especially the "conservative" ones, aren't enlightened like Rendell; they'd never elect a black man. Which is why, if you follow the logic, Democrats need to elect Hillary -- because a black Democratic candidate would produce a Republican president.

Nice, huh? We get to discredit Obama on the basis of his race, while impugning white voters at the same time.

Rendell's not the first to come up with this theory. I've had multiple white Democratic friends tell me the same thing. They like Obama -- really, they do -- but they can't vote for him because so many other white people are racists.

And who knows, they could be right. But so far, the only people I've met who say they wouldn't vote for Obama on the account of his race are white liberals who claim that they could vote for a black man, but won't, because so many other whites can't.

I don't for a moment think these white liberals are racist, but unwittingly, they're perpetuating racism if -- even for what may seem like noble reasons -- they vote against Obama because of his race.

And for all their concerns about rampant American bigotry, they may be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Obama loses because white liberals who thought he couldn't win refuse to vote for him, they will later on, no doubt, point to his defeat as proof that the country is too racist to elect a black man. When in reality, the only whites who weren't ready to elect a black man were the very liberals who claim to be the most racially tolerant.

Rendell is, predictably, already backpedaling from his comments, and if the usual pattern holds up, the Clinton campaign will never even acknowledge them. But that's OK, they've served their purpose: Putting the thought into the heads of many a Democratic voter that casting a ballot for a black man would be a huge mistake.

Here's a crazy idea: What if people just voted for the candidate they liked the most, regardless of race or political calculation? After all, from the looks of things, that's what most people are already doing -- Hillary Clinton be damned.